


Sagas

by stitch_witch_82



Series: Fortunate Prognostications [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Angel/Demon Relationship, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Cain's Exile, Exposition, Genesis Flood, Good Omens OCs Through the Ages, Ineffable Drunks, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Partners, M/M, Other, Shakespearean Sonnets, Storytelling, Tower of Babel, Vikings, but i used the warning just to be safe, how do I even begin to tag this, rape/non-con stuff is only mentioned in passing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 05:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20887136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitch_witch_82/pseuds/stitch_witch_82
Summary: In which Punctuality, an awkward misfit of an angel, visits the bookshop to request Aziraphale's help with something.(Warning for a vague passing mention of rape having happened in the past, just in case.  Absolutely no graphic depictions in the story, but I don't wanna surprise-trigger anyone with something that scary.)





	Sagas

It had been a week and a half since the world didn't end, and Aziraphale was starting to feel safe. Not one sign of the forces of heaven since he and Crowley had survived their respective trials. The two of them had been able to spend so much time together, to be open and honest and genuine with each other, and it was starting to feel too good to be true. So he was disappointed but not too terribly surprised when, on a Wednesday afternoon just as he was about to close up shop for the day because Crowley had arrived to pick him up for a dinner date, an angel walked into the bookshop.

He _was_ a little surprised by which angel it was – a low-ranking Virtue known as Punctuality – and what they said when they entered. It wasn't anything about treason or the apocalypse or how shameful it was to be consorting with demons, for one thing. It was, in fact, “Heyyy, um, Aziraphale, sorry to be one of those bad customers bursting in just before closing, but do you have any Norse Sagas?”

And then “Originals, I mean, nothing recent and _definitely_ not English translations. Nothing in modern Norwegian or Finnish or Swedish either. I need stuff that won't be on the internet. And anything with drawings of individual ships. I've found some old birchbark scrolls, in Québec, and I want to compare some of the accounts to what Leif said about Vinland, because I'm trying to find--”

And then “Oh! You must be Crowley! Nice to meet you! I'm Punctuality. I've heard all sorts of horrible things about you that probably aren't true. Celestial gossip, you know.”

When both of them just stared at the new arrival in stunned silence, the small angel stopped talking and stared back. “Oh. Oh don't worry, you're- you're not in trouble. Not from me, anyway. I'm not here on behalf of any _authorities_. Not nearly important enough for anything like that.”

It wasn't that Aziraphale didn't trust his fellow angels, but... no, he didn't trust his fellow angels. Just because it wasn't Gabriel and his cronies didn't mean trouble wouldn't follow. The diminutive Virtue could just as easily be a harbinger of something awful as a group of dour-faced Archangels could. For all that they were less than five feet tall and dressed in faded bluejeans and a flannel shirt with a red and black tartan, and had their asymmetrical hair coloured a rather uncanny shade of teal, and their human form – only slightly to the feminine side of gender-neutral – didn't look much more than a quarter-century old, they could be dangerous. Heaven wasn't exactly _prone_ to misdirection, but it was possible.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Birchbark scrolls, you say?” he asked cautiously.

“I know, right!” they replied enthusiastically. “An Ojibwe tradition, as far as I know, but the images clearly illustrate Abenaki mythology, and I found them near Trois-Rivieres, way beyond anywhere the Ojibwe ever lived. The scrolls were in Odanak style baskets, too. But this one also has a drawing that looks very much like a Viking-age longship.” They reached into a faded canvass satchel and pulled out some sort of modern computery device, rather bigger than the mobile phone Crowley carried around, and tapped the screen a few times.

When they held the tablet out to Aziraphale, he put on his reading glasses to examine the image. It was indeed a sheet of bark peeled from a paper birch tree, and there were markings on it that looked vaguely human-shaped. Except for the one that was definitely Dragon-Ship-Shaped. Crowley took a few cautious steps closer and glanced briefly at the picture.

“If you ever have occasion to be in Canada, I donated the originals to the Odanak Historical Society, and they likely have them at the Musée des Abénakis, which is about halfway between Québec City and Montréal.” As they switched languages, their accent slipped seamlessly from a generic English-Speaking-North-American to Very-Québecois-Francophone. “Though the Historical Society will likely be studying them a good while before they're put out on public display. Or having heated discussions with Ojibwe midewiwin over who has more right to have custody of them...”

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged a glance. Punctuality seemed very chipper and enthusiastic, and apparently genuinely interested in comparing indigenous scrolls with viking sagas. But that didn't mean they didn't have an ulterior motive of some sort.

“Oh,” the Virtue said, spying the shared glances. “You don't trust me. I guess that's fair. And I'll admit I'm not _just_ here to poke about your shop and show you pictures of old scrolls. I'll tell you the whole story, if you like. It'll take a while, but I very much want both of you to hear it. Because I need your help with something.”

“Help with what?” Crowley asked suspiciously.

“Oh dear,” Punctuality looked a tad flustered. “Well. Um. You see, there's... there's a certain lady I need to woo. A demonic sort of lady. I thought if anyone could help me figure out _how_, it'd be you two.”

Stunned silence once again filled the A.Z. Fell and Co. Bookshop.

“What _exactly_ are you getting at?” Crowley eventually asked.

Punctuality sighed. “Look, I don't presume to know the nature of your relationship, but there are rumours. And from Zophiel's observation files you spend enough time together that you have to at least be friends... You think you're the only two people who ever cared for someone they were supposed to think of as an enemy?”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes in thought for a bit. “I suppose not,” he said, sounding resigned and gesturing toward the back room. “Come in and tell us your story. Would you like something to drink?”

“Oh, it... it doesn't have to be right now,” Punctuality stammered nervously. “If you two have other plans this evening, I can come back later. I'm in London for a while. Rented a flat in Camden Town for the whole month. Gotta go up to somewhere called Tadfield to look into some weather pattern weirdness, but I don't need a whole month for that.”

“Don't worry about it, my dear,” Aziraphale said reassuringly. “Now is as good a time as any. We can order something in if you want to eat.” Crowley looked a tad annoyed, but Aziraphale just gave him one of those smiles that always placated him.

“If you're sure I'm not inconveniencing you,” Punctuality said. “I guess I'd like a cup of tea?”

They all made their way to the back room of the shop, where Aziraphale put on the kettle.

“So who is it you're hoping to woo?” Crowley asked, sprawling out across his favourite chair. “Anyone I should know?”

“I think you'd likely know her, yes,” Punctuality replied. “She doesn't really have a name, or at least, she never keeps one for very long. Hasn't since the Fall.”

“Oh. You can't mean-- But you _do_, don't you? Shit.” Crowley turned to Aziraphale with a grin. “Angel, they're trying to get us to help them seduce the _Succubus_.”

“Well that can't be too terribly hard, can it? Aren't succubi supposed to be rather promiscuous?”

“Not _a_ succubus,” Crowley explained. “_The_ Succubus. Capital S. The one who got Lilith to spurn Adam before Eve was in the picture. She was the Archangel Samael before the fall, and literally the one who sent me up to Eden to _make some trouble._”

“Oh.” Aziraphale regarded Punctuality with newfound interest as he waited for the kettle to boil. Then he turned back to Crowley and smiled. “Well, I suppose we ought to thank her then. If she hadn't done that, we'd never have met.”

Crowley blushed and made a flustered noise.

“I mean, it's more complicated than that, of course,” Punctuality mumbled, also blushing somewhat. “But yeah, that's who she is, and who she was. And I need to _woo_, not seduce. I haven't spent thousands of years in love with her just for some one-night stand.”

“Of course not, dear,” Aziraphale said reassuringly. He rested one hand idly on Crowley's shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze. “Why don't you start at the beginning.”

Punctuality nodded. “It starts rather before the beginning, actually. When Samael was an Archangel... she... well, I mean she was using he/him pronouns at the time, but we all were, back then, even God Herself. Anyway. I was scared of her at first. She was someone important, and I was a nobody. She forged weapons, and taught other angels how to use them. Powers and Principalities, mostly, and some of the Cherubim. Maybe you were in some of her classes?”

Aziraphale nodded. He had, in fact, studied swordsmanship under the tutelage of Samael. A strict no-nonsense teacher, with zero patience for anyone who took their lessons less than seriously.

“Right,” Punctuality continued. “I wasn't. Nobody up there's gonna bother teaching a Virtue how to use a weapon. That's not what we're for. I picked up a little swordsmanship here on earth, in the viking age. But I'll get to that later. Most of my memories of Samael involved me fetching and carrying things for the forge. I always got things where they needed to be right on time, and I guess she appreciated that. Not that she showed it much, of course. Anyway, she was all Beautiful and Terrible, and I just wanted to be useful to her. Didn't think she'd ever really pay much attention to me. She made flaming swords and hung out with important people like Lucifer and Ba'alzebul.”

“Don't ever let Beelzebub catch you saying that name,” Crowley advised, grinning, “They'll flay you to bits and feed you to maggots.”

“Right,” Punctuality said again, their eyes wide. “I guess that makes sense. There was a lot of stuff about the Fall that I never really got told. Everything was on a need-to-know basis, and apparently Virtues did not need to know. I never saw the Archangel Samael again.”

The electric kettle clicked off as the water reached the boiling point. The kettle was twenty-three years old and the single most modern thing Aziraphale owned. He filled a teapot while Punctuality continued their tale. It went something like this;

\---

First time I saw the Succubus was after Cain's exile. The humans' holy books got most of it right, as far as I know; Cain grew crops and Abel tended flocks. They both made offerings, and Abel's offering was more Pleasing Unto The Lord than Cain's was. Cain got jealous and killed Abel, blah blah blah. Of course, the books all say God did this, God did that, but She rarely got directly involved, even then. When God asked Cain where his brother was, it was through the Metatron, and so it was Metatron who Cain asked 'Am I my brother's keeper?' and Metatron who announced Cain's judgment for murdering Abel.

But he just _speaks_ for God; never actually does stuff, so it wasn't him who stuck the Mark on Cain. That unpleasant duty was dumped on a Virtue named Justice. A fair crowd had gathered, by this point, and they weren't all human. I didn't like it, but I understood that God had to set a precedent by making sure the first ever murderer was properly punished, so I didn't interfere while Justice did her job.

_My_ job at the time was mostly controlling the weather. Never got to pick and choose which weather-related prayers were answered, but was in charge of answering them. People didn't care as much about timeliness as they do these days, as long as the seasons started on time, and all that. That's all automated now – the seasons – but I used to have to do it manually. Anyway, I was supposed to send stormclouds to follow Cain around for a bit, so I left the crowd of onlookers and headed up into the hills. Weather is easier to manipulate from up high. The Succubus, formerly Samael, detached herself from the crowd and followed me. Grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go, even when I shouted 'Unhand me, fiend!' Ranted at me for following orders I didn't agree with and how she thought I was smarter than that, and I should think for myself and stuff.

I think, in retrospect, she was upset that I hadn't fallen with the rest of them. Maybe she even missed me? But at the time I was only thinking that I couldn't be seen hobnobbing with a demon, so I summoned a lightning bolt. I'm good at weather, and had already started with the storm clouds, right? It didn't hit her; just smote a nearby tree. But it startled her enough that she let go, so I ran off.

The next time I saw her was during the Flood. Again, I was doing weather stuff, following orders and not liking it. The other Virtues and I drowned thousands of innocent people that week, all because God wanted to get rid of a few dozen monstrous Nephilim and a few hundred bad humans. I hated it, of course, opening the floodgates of heaven and causing the deaths of thousands, but I wasn't _important_ enough to question orders.

So there I was at the peak of Dena, in the Zagros Mountains. The highest one; I was the best at weather stuff, so I was on the tallest mountain, guiding the storm from start to finish.

A week into the flood, when there had been nothing but me and a scraggly little olive tree on the peak, which had become an island, I suddenly noticed I wasn't alone. As the waterline had slowly climbed the mountain, so had she. She looked more sad than angry this time, but again she confronted me on blindly following orders when she knew I could think for myself. I started crying, lamenting all the human lives I'd just ended; lovers who died in each other's arms, children wailing for their parents... I'd felt all of their last moments, and it was breaking me... But I didn't know what she thought I should have done differently. If I refused my orders I'd probably end up damned and fallen like the demons, or turned into a mountain like the violent rapist asshole angels whose disgusting violence had conceived the Nephilim.

God turned those guys into mountains, by the way. The one I was standing on making the flood used to be a Seraph named Tarshishim. I asked the Succubus what _her_ name was, and she said she hadn't found one she liked. That became a thing; almost every time we met, I'd introduce myself and ask her name. She'd shrug and tell me what the local humans had been calling her, and insist she wasn't attached to it--

\---

There was a brief interruption when a potential customer entered the shop and Aziraphale went to glare suspiciously at him until he left. While the Principality was away doing that, Crowley gave the Virtue a long, hard, unblinking stare.

“Do you, like, ever blink?” they asked.

“No,” Crowley lied.

“If you're trying to intimidate me, it's working,” they said, fidgeting.

“Good,” he answered with a slightly menacing grin.

“I think I get why,” they went on, with a gesture out toward the bookshop. “Aziraphale isn't terribly popular Upstairs. Most other angels don't know what to make of him. So you probably haven't seen them treating him well very often, if at all.”

“They tried to _kill_ him,” Crowley said through gritted teeth.

Punctuality nodded. “For stopping their stupid war and saving the world? I'm not surprised. Archangels don't like it when their authority isn't treated as absolute. But what you need to understand about _me_ is... I'm something of a misfit myself. And much weaker and lower in rank than a Principality. I couldn't hurt Aziraphale if I tried. Also... I like this world too. You can't get proper junk food in heaven. Or fast cars, roller-coasters, loud concerts... real maple syrup... About a million other things that are unique to _this_ world. I'm grateful to both of you for whatever role you had in averting Earth's destruction.”

“How much do you know about that?” Crowley asked cautiously.

“Not a lot,” they replied. “There are a great many rumours, but I couldn't begin to guess which are true. There was going to be a war, and then there wasn't. The Archangels have tried to keep details hushed up. But the angels who were there when Aziraphale showed up at the Quartermaster's post, late, discorporated, and sans flaming sword, haven't all kept their mouths shut. The gossip is that he refused to go take command of his platoon, and then just went back to earth _without_ a body?”

Crowley shrugged. “Something like that.”

There was a little ding from the bell as the customer left, then a distinct click and swish as Aziraphale locked the door and closed the blinds. He returned to the back room and poured himself another cup of tea. “Sorry about that, my dears. All closed up now, so hopefully we won't be interrupted again. Please go on.”

“Right,” Punctuality said. “Where was I? Crying on a mountain. As I continued to cry, she came closer. Opened her arms and held me. Extended her wings around us and sheltered me from a burst of cold wind. I was so overwhelmed that I just... told her she should go, even though I didn't want her to. Metatron was likely to send someone to check in on me any moment. So she left but... not before kissing me. Just kissed me all softly, and then burbled down into the ground and back to hell.”

\---

Four hundred years later, I saw her in a city called Babel. She'd been instrumental in the building of a tower there, and of course it was my job to knock it down. Again I didn't like what I was doing, or understand why I had to do it, but didn't have the spine to question my orders. This time the problem was human pride; they were trying to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven.

When I approached her in a crowd, watching some street-entertainers in an open-air market, I opened with a joke about the tower being phallic. She was cold, businesslike. Acted like she hadn't ever held me or kissed me. Asked what I was here to destroy this time. The tower, I told her, among other things. We – the Virtues – were to smite the bloody thing with lightning, and then each take a group of humans off somewhere far away. Each group of humans would forget the universal language they'd all spoken up until then, and learn one of the new ones God had invented.

Of course the Succubus says the tower is a testament to human _co-operation_ and _ingenuity_, and that scattering the poor buggers to the ends of the earth and fucking up their communication with hundreds of different languages was just heaven being jealous of what humanity could accomplish. I didn't entirely disagree, but I wasn't the only angel in the area, and I was terrified of what would happen if I was seen being in even the slightest bit of agreement with a rather important demon. So I argued. Cited bits of what I'd been told about the Grand Plan. Told her how pretty the languages were, and surely with all their _ingenuity_ the humans would eventually learn to communicate in each other's languages.

She insisted the language barriers would lead to misunderstandings, and in turn to all manner of fighting. And she was right, of course. It was probably because of language-related miscommunication that War became a thing.

She called me some rather nasty names, and then stormed off. I co-ordinated with the other Virtues and we smote the tower with a massive lightning bolt as ordered. There was thankfully little in the way of collateral damage when it fell, which I sometimes wonder if she had something to do with. Then I miracled my group of humans up to Scandinavia and taught them a language that was an ancestor of Old Norse.

Egypt was the next place I saw her. She saw me first, followed me as I wandered by a river looking for a baby in the bulrushes, asked me what I was doing. I said something snarky like 'You'll be pleased to know I'm not getting any new innocent human blood on my hands today,' and she sneered, but eventually conceded to being relieved. Said she didn't like what it did to me; the killing. Said enough of it would turn me into someone, something else.

I pointed to the basket I'd just spotted in the rushes, then to Miriam hiding nearby, then to Pharaoh's daughter and her maidservant bathing a short ways downriver. I made some wind blow the basket loose at just the right time to drift by the princess while she was looking in the right direction to spot it, as the baby's sister watched from her hiding place. Pharaoh's daughter picked up the baby and I didn't even _have_ to use a miracle to make her fall in love with the wee thing. Then clever little Miriam walked up and said 'Princess, shall I go find a Hebrew woman to be wet-nurse for your new baby?' and that's how Moses came to be raised by his adoptive mother and nursed by his biological one.

The Succubus and I watched all this from upstream while I explained how important that baby was going to grow up to be, how he was going to use the privilege afforded him by being raised as Egyptian royalty to lead his people out of slavery and stuff. God's Great Plan wasn't all doom and suffering for the humans. She seemed pleased by that. Told me good deeds like that suited me much better than smiting. I told her it wasn't very demonic of her to be approving of good deeds.

She sorta waxed poetic a bit about how complicated morality was, how good and evil weren't really all that clear-cut. How heaven wasn't really as good as it was supposed to be, and the people in hell were all _miserable_ but not all full of ill-intent. I didn't really understand, or entirely agree, but I had never enjoyed arguing with her, so I didn't. I _did_ agree that most angels were rather stuffy-headed.

She reiterated her appreciation for my ability to think for myself. Praised my cleverness for arranging Moses' adoption like I had. I guess I was blushing, but I was also bold. That time _I_ kissed _her_. Then I told her she should get out of Egypt if she could, because plagues were coming. Blood and bugs and frogs and Pestilence. She asked when she would see me again and I said I didn't know, but I hoped it was soon.

It was almost five hundred years... but it didn't go well. And it was _me_ who picked the fight that time, because _she_ had convinced Delilah to cut off Samson's hair. Forgetting everything about Samson's covenant with God; it was the violation of consent that bothered me. You don't just _cut someone's hair_ without their permission. Body autonomy. And she had the nerve to use the excuse that she was _following orders_. Hadn't that been what she was always on _my_ case for? I didn't see her again for over a thousand years.

By that time we were up here on this pretty little island of yours. I was blessing a well at Aquae Sulis, where the city of Bath is today. In Somerset, you know the one. She was in one of the public baths, and she's lucky I noticed her before I blessed the spring that fed that one; if it had turned into Holy Water while she was in it, it would not have gone well for her. I told her as much, and she laughed and thanked me for the warning. Asked if I had to bless it right away, or if I could sit with her for a bit.

So I sat. We talked. It was nice. I mean, I'm sure part of her brain was dutifully planning ways to tempt me to damnation, and of course I always had these thoughts in the back of my mind that I could redeem her and she could be an angel again. But I kept delaying bringing up the subject, and so did she, so we just sat there in a beautiful stone bath, warm water bubbling up from the hotspring below.

We talked for hours, and I forgot all the duties and worries, and just enjoyed her company. I guess she was enjoying mine too, because she kept shifting ever so slightly closer, and we _were_ mostly naked, being in a bath and all. I was blushing _hard_ when we... almost got caught.

My twin, Patience? She had been blessing the men's baths while I was working on the women's. Opposite to the genders we were presenting as at the time, but that amused us. We were pretending to be servants. She poked her head in to ask if I was done yet. Not _impatiently_ – she's genuinely incapable of that. Just idly curious as to how much time she had before we'd have to get going. The Succubus had ducked underwater as soon as we heard Patience calling out to me. And she stayed there, the whole time I explained to my sister that I was nearly done, and that she could just go off and make flower crowns or teach humans the value of the virtue she was named for, or whatever. Patience took a while to get the hint that I wanted privacy. I was worried that a certain demon lady would drown and discorporate.

She didn't. Patience left eventually, and I flashed the Succubus a hand-signal to come back up, and she burst back to the surface. We laughed and splashed each other a bit, but then she said she had to go. Temptations on her to-do list and all that. So I watched her go, wishing she didn't have to, and once she was safely out, I blessed the final spring and went to join my blissfully ignorant twin, who was indeed making flower crowns. Patience told me a funny story about the men in the bath-house mistaking her for a vision of Sulis-Minerva, the Goddess (technically two Goddesses) of the place. She didn't notice how red my face was, or if she did, she attributed it to her story, or the hot bath I'd been in.

The next time I saw the Succubus, it went badly. I'd been back up in Norway, in and around royal court, but then I was sent south on a ship in 793. At the time, Christian missionaries were pushing north to Scandinavia, and there was a lot of contention between them and the practitioners of the old Norse faith. Heaven, oddly enough, didn't care one way or the other about the religious differences the human-folks had.

In my current human identity I was a young lad from the distant relations of someone who had a few ships and was nominally important at court. This captain, who I called uncle at the time – the letter I'd brought with me to court had introduced me as the son of one of his second-cousins, but uncle was a lot easier to say than any of that... He hadn't really told me what the voyage was for. I had no idea until we stormed the abbey at Lindisfarne. No idea whatsoever that I was about to personally witness what is historically considered to be the beginning of the viking age.

Lindisfarne, a remote Northumbrian island, was a centre of learning at the time. One of my biggest regrets is that I never got to visit the place before my shipmates started ransacking it. It wasn't a library as noteworthy as the one in Alexandria, of course, but it was still full of books and scrolls and antiquity and apocrypha. Relics of saints, artworks, beautiful illuminated books, and of course students of all ilks, from all over the isles and the continent. To the Norsemen, however, it was a bastion of that invasive religion that had been creeping up from the south.

I was powerless to stop my shipmates as they threw frightened monks into the sea and torched everything torchable, dragging off what material wealth they would gather. In the confusion I managed to slip away from the Norsemen, and I did what I could to get the young acolytes away toward the island's tiny fishing village. It took a genuine miracle to get the lads to trust me – I was, after all, dressed the same as the raiders killing their teachers.

That's when I spotted a familiar figure, just beyond the edge of the low stone wall that surrounded the abbey's gardens. So many times I'd found her lingering just on the edge of consecrated ground. Towers and Temples, and here she was just inches shy of it again. And she had a sword.

She shooed my gathering of acolytes on toward the village, but would not let me follow them. Levelled the blade at my neck, and started ranting about how there'd been signs and portents and _omens_ all bloody year that something bad was coming, and here I was with a ship full of raiders, and was this heaven's wrath again, and was I back to blindly following orders and smiting innocents to cover the asses of the bigwigs Upstairs?

I was so angry that she'd jumped to that conclusion as soon as she saw me, and insisted loudly that this had nothing to do with heaven. And I had my own little sword, didn't I? So I knocked hers out of the way. She threw more accusations and suspicions, and she was much _much_ better with a sword than I was; I'd been a student of the blade for five decades or thereabouts, whereas she'd been a master for rather five _millennia_. I've always been quick, but I couldn't hold her off. The only advantage I had was the soil on my side of the low stone wall being consecrated. She couldn't step over. Or so I thought. When I tried to retreat, she stepped over the wall and pressed the attack.

I could tell from her footwork that it hurt just touching the ground, but she fought me all the way back to where my shipmates were still pillaging, hurling insults all the way. It was just like Babel, she insisted; the abbey was a centre of culture and education, devoted to all the best things humanity could accomplish, and here I was raining destruction. She didn't listen to anything I said about how the destruction wasn't my idea or my fault, and that I was trying to _spare_ people from it, and I hadn't even meant to be there in the first place. She knocked my sword from my hand and kicked it beyond my reach, before throwing me to the ground.

I begged her to believe me, to trust me. Swore up and down that I'd never lie to her, but the rage that had taken hold of her was a murderous one, and she had her blade to my neck again. I was certain that any moment I would be back upstairs explaining to some functionary why I'd gone and gotten myself discorporated.

But the captain, my “uncle” was suddenly there, bursting around the corner, barreling into her and knocking her down. She let out an unholy shriek when the bare skin of her left forearm made direct contact with the consecrated ground. I was dragged to my feet, and back to the ship, scolded all the while for 'sporting with the locals' instead of filling my pack with valuables. I couldn't think straight, beyond hoping she was alright. I worried about her all the way back to Norway.

Someone upstairs got it in their head that the whole thing – not just the raid, the entire viking age – was my fault. I was assigned to stick around Scandinavia for a few centuries, trying to convince kings and chieftains to favour peaceful trade and exploration over raiding. But the Norse folk were stubborn. Their agricultural seasons were short, so those who lived off the land didn't have enough. But the land that was theirs, that had been their home since I brought them there from Babel, was _theirs_ and they weren't going to give up on it. Many saw raiding as their only option.

I was in a little Norse settlement on the northern coast of Ireland in the summer of 981 when I saw my lady again. She was one of the representatives from the neighbouring Irish village, part of a group that had come to establish trade relations. I felt I had done rather well with the settlement, keeping everyone peaceful. Demonstrating that there were non-violent ways to live. When I saw her, I thought it might be over again.

But she saw me too, and she didn't attack. In fact, she sort of avoided my eyes like she maybe felt bad about almost having discorporated me. We pretended not to know each other while the delegations from the two villages talked trade. The talks went okay; there didn't seem to be any baseless animosity between her village and mine, so long as their respective fishermen stuck to their own bits of shoreline to send boats out from.

We didn't have an inn, so her people were put up for the night in a few different places. I had my own house there, and as I had been living as a young woman in those days, (the Norse didn't really follow the rest of the west in terms of gender roles – I could still wear a tunic and trousers, and live independently, and not be seen as inappropriate) it seemed natural that she, a supposedly slightly older unmarried woman, would be hosted at my place. We sat up talking late into the night. I was able to tell her things I'd always held back previously. We talked about heaven and hell, and all the things we'd seen on earth. Admitted to fondness for each other. Decided what lies we'd tell our respective sides if we were caught together. (The old temptation and redemption lines.) She had a burn scar from where her bare forearm had connected with consecrated ground at the abbey. Just rolled up her sleeve and showed it to me, and said sorry for all the accusations she'd shouted at me that night at Lindisfarne.

Said that as far as anyone in hell knew, _she_ had started the viking age, by making all those isolated monasteries into tempting targets, and aggravating Norse leaders with persistent missionaries. Got some kind of commendation for it, even. I told her about the new places the Norse sailors had found when I could convince them to try exploration instead of raiding. Iceland and Greenland.

It was a rather historic time, though most people didn't know it. After Babel, when humans had rather involuntarily been spread out across the earth, some had gone east from where it all started, and others had gone west. And they hadn't all stayed where we'd scattered them to – many had migrated further east and west. In Greenland in the late 900s, the Norse had first encountered the Thule – ancestors of today's Inuit – and so descendants of people who'd gone east had had their first encounter with descendants of people who'd gone west. An important moment for human history, I thought.

The meetings hadn't always been peaceful, of course, but I'd done my best to guide the ones I was present for in co-operative directions. Kayaks and canoes meeting dragon-headed longboats makes a pretty picture.

She changed the subject by saying _I_ made a pretty picture, so I asked if she might kiss me again. And I'm afraid we got a little carried away but, then, it had been rather three and a half thousand years since our first kiss during the flood, so maybe my thought that things were proceeding too fast was inaccurate. We ended up, well, in bed. I told her I thought she was a good person, that her kindness was wasted being a demon, and maybe if I talked to the right people Upstairs, she could come home. She went all quiet at that; just held me. I fell asleep in her arms.

But when I woke up, she was gone. And I never found out where. Nobody had seen her leave. I sat by the shore crying for days, trying to understand what I'd done wrong. Maybe she was right to go. Maybe we couldn't really be together. And it was her risk more than mine; I'd be reprimanded and given a few centuries of boring drudgery jobs, but if _she_ were caught canoodling, they'd probably outright destroy her. Or try, at least. And maybe I'd been wrong to bring up thoughts of redemption and all that. Maybe that's what drove her away.

I had to get away from that place. Took a job on the first available ship back up to Greenland. Over the years, orders from Upstairs had me blowing viking ships off course so they were _forced_ to explore instead of raid. I was on Leif Erikson's ship when he found Vinland, which is somewhere in the Maritime provinces of Canada, I think. That's, ah, what I was asking you about Norse Sagas for. I think the remains of a Norse settlement at Anse-Aux-Meadows in Newfoundland might be it, but I _had_ rather thought it was further south, so that might be one of the other little colonies.

The Norse settlements there didn't last very long; hard winders and idiot leaders provoking the natives with raids, but some of the survivors married into neighbouring indigenous tribes. I stayed. Wandered. The Americas were beautiful before colonialism ruined everything. Upstairs didn't seem to mind. I've spent most of the last millennium on that side of the Atlantic. Work had me back in Europe a few times during the renaissance, but I always went back to Canada. Came to settle in what is now Toronto around three hundred years ago. I still live there now. I guess... that's my story. 

-

Punctuality bit their lip, and fidgeted with their empty teacup, spinning it around and around. Aziraphale had stood for the entire story, one hand idly resting on one of Crowley's shoulders, drinking tea from his wing-decorated mug. Crowley hadn't been able to sit still for the story, shifting frequently in his chair, but never getting up.

“I say,” Aziraphale remarked. “So you haven't seen her since that night in 981?”

Punctuality shrugged. “Nope. Tried to keep tabs, when I could. Even discovered an address in Dublin in the 1700s and wrote to her. The response was... not positive.”

“How so?” Aziraphale asked.

“She just... wrote out Shakespeare's 142nd sonnet. The one that ends with _'If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example may'st thou be denied!'_ I wasn't sure how to take it, and that sonnet was the entire text of her reply. So whatever I did wrong, whatever gave her cause to run off while I was sleeping, I guess she's still mad about it.”

Crowley started absentmindedly tapping the table. “I don't even know if we _can_ help you, let alone why we _should_.”

Aziraphale shot him a reproachful look, then tried to change the subject. “I'm hungry. Is anyone else hungry? I think I'd like to order in from somewhere...” He opened one of his desk drawers, withdrew a small stack of folded menus from his favourite local restaurants that delivered, and spread them out across the table. Punctuality's gut made an audible grumble at the mention of food

“I understand,” Punctuality told Crowley. “If I were you I'd be reluctant to stick my neck out for a stranger, too. I can swear I'd do the same for you if it came to it, but you have no real reason to believe me. Except for the story I told you. I gave you all my secrets, and you can hold that over me. If anyone Upstairs hears that I have, ah, consorted with a rather important demon... well. Let's just say you two now have the power to ruin me if you so choose.”

“If your story is even true,” Crowley countered.

“There is that, I suppose,” they conceded. “I suppose you'd know as well as any that angels are just as capable of lying as humans and demons are. Hmm. Well, that's all I've got. If you don't want to help me, I have no way of insisting or compelling. I'll just get back to Camden--”

“_I_ insist,” Aziraphale cut in, “That, at the very least, you stay for supper. You are our guest.” He pointed very firmly at the menus, and Punctuality's stomach rumbled yet again.

“Any places that do Indian food?” they asked. “Pakoras that aren't too spicy, and aloo gobi?”

Aziraphale nodded and plucked a menu from the pile and handed it over, pleased to be acting as the gallant host. He hushed Crowley's protestations by once again resting a hand on his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. When Crowley looked up at him, he smiled back, which seemed to placate him somewhat.

They ordered Indian food. While they waited for it, Aziraphale put record full of Vivaldi concertos on the old gramophone. They all got to talking about the various musical things humans had created over the years. And drinking rather a lot of wine. Aziraphale took his duties as host very seriously, and the alcohol seemed to lighten the mood.

“Know what I miss?” Crowley was saying when the food delivery arrived, “The hurdy-gurdy. Brilliant instrument, the hurdy-gurdy. Half fiddle, half piano, half barrel-organ, half... something else. Loud as bloody bagpipes.” Nobody present was sober enough to object to the idea of anything having that many halves.

There was a knock at the door, and Aziraphale, considerably less drunk than the other two, bustled off to fetch the food and pay the delivery girl.

“Vielle à roue!” Punctuality declared excitedly. “I used to play! Picked it up from some French guys during the renaissance. Six-stringed version. Bloody beast of an instrument. Damn shame when they went out of style.”

“What was the...” Crowley stared up at the ceiling in thought. “The old... big one. Took two people to play.”

“Organ... orga... something?” Punctuality's tongue tripped over the word.

“Organistrum,” Aziraphale said as he returned, giving a satisfied nod as he and started taking containers of food out of a big paper bag.

“Vivaldi wrote some stuff for hurdy-gurdy,” Crowley said, pointing at the gramophone, which was nearing the end of the b-side of the record. “I think. And da Vinci! He designed a giant one. Viola organista. Never got round to building it, though.”

The bookshop grew quiet as the record ended and they ate. Crowley didn't often have much of an appetite, but he had ordered a rather spicy curry that Aziraphale thought he should try. Except he'd asked for it to be made _extra_ spicy. It made his eyes water, but he wasn't going to admit it was _too hot_ and thereby show weakness in front of a couple of angels. Even if one of the angels _was_ his own.

Aziraphale had ordered a number of small samples of various things, and quite happily tried them all.

Punctuality consumed a rather alarming number of pakoras. “Deep fried food is the _best_,” they insisted. “You guys need to come to Canada so you can try Beaver Tails!”

Crowley looked confused; Aziraphale was half horrified and half fascinated. “Beaver... tails?” he asked hesitantly.

“'Sjust a name,” Punctuality explained. “Deep-fried pastry thingy. Lotsa sweet topping choices. I am way too drunk to accurately convey the glory of Canadian cuisine. Y'gotta come visit me in T'ronno. I'll show you all the best... stuff. London is nice, though, I guess. Either of you been to this Tadfield place? Near Oxford I think?”

Crowley let out a “Hah!” and Aziraphale nodded emphatically.

“It's... where Armageddon almost happened,” he said. “And we could probably save you the trouble of going there to investigate the weather by telling _our_ story, couldn't we, Crowley?” He rested his hand on the table between them.

“Wha, the whole thing?”

“If Punctuality is willing to listen, I don't see why not. They've given us rather six millennia of exposition. It's only fair.”

Crowley pondered, then shrugged. “Sure, angel, go ahead. I'll fill in the bits you miss.”

“Right. So it started, I suppose, when _he_ convinced the humans to eat the apple. And God banished them from--”

“And then _he_ gave the flaming sword away!”

“Crowley, don't interrupt!”

Punctuality had intended to listen politely without interrupting, but-- “You _what?_”

“That's exactly what I said!” Crowley replied with a laugh.

“Are you two going to let me tell this story or not?” Aziraphale griped, looking slightly offended. For a few seconds, anyway, then he laughed too.

And so they spent a few more hours in story-telling mode. From the Garden all the way to the Tadfield Airbase. Nobody used any miracles, but they were all mostly sober again by the time the tale was through.

“So it was the Antichrist making all the abnormally normal weather. That makes a lot of sense. Kid full of power he doesn't know he has... Is he still-?”

“We're not entirely sure how much power Adam Young still has,” Aziraphale said. “He did somehow manage to restore the bookshop and Crowley's car...”

“And that was _after_ he told Satan 'You're not my real dad!' and made it true,” Crowley added. “But it may have faded from him since then.”

“I suppose I still ought to go check,” Punctuality decided. “Find out if the lad can still influence weather and whatnot.”

“I'll give you a lift,” Crowley spontaneously decided and announced. “We can introduce you. That is...” he glanced at Aziraphale.

“Oh yes,” he said with a nod, “That sounds like a lovely idea. We can check up on Adam and Them, and I'd love a chance to chat some more with Miss Device about her family's interpretations of Agnes' prophecies.”

“Really?” Punctuality asked. “That's... well, thanks. Cool. Road trip! Saves me renting a car or taking the bus.”

“Saturday?” Crowley suggested. The kids were back in school on weekdays. Also, Saturday was the busiest day for customers coming into the shop, so Aziraphale would be happy to close up early for the occasion.

“Sweet,” Punctuality said with a nod, glancing at a silver pocket watch. “I'll drop in here around noon?”

Crowley nodded, yawning.

“Perfect,” Aziraphale agreed. "Now it's rather late, and I have some accounting to get done. Would you like us to call you a cab back to Camden Town? You're also welcome to stay the night; there's a folding cot and a few spare blankets in the storeroom, if you'd like to sleep."

"Nah," they replied, "I'll just walk to the tube station. It's almost five, so they'll be open soon. Thanks, though."

"If you're sure. Mind how you go."

\- End Part Four -

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I didn't drive too many people off with the exposition dump. :D
> 
> Thanks to the friends whose suggestions helped me out when I was stuck on bits and pieces of this!!


End file.
